


Romance is Dead

by sternchencas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fighting, Fluff, M/M, Zombie AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 11:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17600567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternchencas/pseuds/sternchencas
Summary: Dean invites Cas to a romantic cabin to finally tell him how he feels. They get interrupted by very unwelcome guests.





	Romance is Dead

Dean has never been so nervous in his entire life. He runs back and forth between the kitchen and the living room of the cabin that he rented out for this evening. Although the flames in the fireplace are cackling brightly, he constantly checks if he needs to do something to keep it going. After all, it’s the most important thing when it comes to creating a romantic atmosphere.

Romantic. Dean sighs when the word crosses his mind. He wonders how he ended up here and if it’s the right thing to do, but then he shakes his head. Doubt won’t help him. “You thought about this long enough,” he whispers to himself, his voice so low that the cracking of the logs in the fire drowns out his voice.

“This is the right thing to do. You can do it!” Dean adds louder. “I mean, what can go wrong, right? It’s just Cas.”

Dean’s stomach turns when he says his friend’s name out loud. It’s not just Cas. It’s Cas. Dies-for-me, sacrifices-everything-for-me, and is-the-best-person-ever-Cas. Well, maybe not a person; an angel; his angel. Dean runs his hands through his hair and storms back into the kitchen with another sigh. What was he thinking, baking a pie for an angel? Cas won’t even be able to taste it. But now it’s done, so Dean puts two slices of pie on paper plates and sets them down next to a bottle of wine in front of the fire.

He arranges everything on a blanket as if they are having a picnic and keeps fussing with the napkins until there’s a loud knock on the door. Dean jumps to his feet and opens it with so much force that he almost rips it off its frail hinges. “Heya Cas,” he says, trying to sound casual.

“Hello Dean,” Cas says, his brows furrowed. “Why did you want me to come here?”

“I- just-,” Dean tries, not sure how to explain it. “Why don’t you come in first?”

Cas walks in and positions himself at the other side of the room, still looking at Dean. He doesn’t seem to notice Dean’s romantic arrangement. “Um,” Dean starts, watching Cas, “you really never take that off, huh? I mean, there’s a freaking fire in here.”

“That doesn’t make a difference,” Cas explains. “To me, every place has the same temperature.”

Dean thinks about making an argument about being comfortable, but then he gestures to the ground. “Let’s sit.”

Again, Cas does as Dean says, but doesn’t get the message a romantic meal in front of a fireplace usually conveys. “Do you need help with something?”

“We’ve been so busy lately,” Dean says, giving an answer he already prepared during the day, “I just thought we could hang out, have a little talk.”

Finally, Cas’ frame slouches a little bit as if he allows himself to relax. “Of course, I always enjoy our talks.”

Dean contemplates to go all in from the start but instead, he hands Cas one of the paper plates with the pie and begins to shovel big chunks of his own slice into his mouth. Cas eyes the pie warily for a moment, but then he picks up his fork and clumsily manages to get a tiny piece of it into his mouth. He’s clearly not used to eating but he chews, and Dean speaks with his mouth still full, “Good?”

“It’s more pleasant than I thought. These are apples, right?” Cas pokes a bit of apple with his fork, testing the texture. “It tastes … fresh, like a summer morning.”

Dean can’t help but feel proud. Nobody has ever compared his pie to anything in such a poetic way. “So you like it?”

“I don’t think I will consume food in the future,” Cas admits, “but I do enjoy this.” He puts another piece into his mouth, chews slowly, and unlike Dean, he only speaks again when he’s done. “What did you want to talk about?”

Chuck knows Dean wishes he could draw this out even longer, but he promised himself not to back down again. He needs to say it. Now. “We’ve known each other for years now, and you’re my best friend.”

Cas gives him a fond little smile, and for that alone, Dean wishes he could stow the speech and kiss the angel stupid. Instead, he tries his best to keep going. “Lately, well, not exactly recently, more like for a while now, I have- I felt-,” Dean says, and he gets angry at himself when the words won’t come. “Okay, forget that crap. Cas, I love-”

Dean doesn’t get to finish the sentence. Cas doesn’t look in his face but squints at something over Dean’s shoulder, and suddenly he leaps forward and pushes him out of the way. A second later, there’s a loud crash. The window behind Dean shatters, glass flying everywhere, and a dark figure stumbles into the room.

While Cas is already getting to his feet, Dean lies there, not yet sure what happened. Only when the figure comes for him, Dean’s instincts kick in, and he jumps to his feet. The thing is a muscular guy. With his arms outstretched and a terrible groan, he tries to grab Dean, who takes a quick step back and hastily checks the room for a weapon. He goes for the next best thing, the wine bottle, and is prepared to smash it on the guy’s head. The stranger groans again, and in the firelight, Dean can see something trickling from his mouth. At first, it looks like blood, but it has a greenish shine to it.

Dean raises the bottle, ready to strike, but the weird guy gets pulled back with so much force that he bends in the middle like a folding chair. Cas is holding him by the neck of his jacket and uses the momentum to throw him against the nearest wall. A second later, he’s next to him again and pushes a hand over his face. There’s nothing more their attacker can do before white light is shooting out of his eyes, and finally, he collapses on the floor.

“Woah, Cas,” Dean says, lowering the bottle, “you gotta chill. What if he was just drunk or something?”

Cas takes his place next to Dean and stares out of the broken window. “This thing wasn’t human. And I think there might be more of them.”

With a swift movement, he gets out his angel blade, and Dean checks the corps. Cas might be able to burn those things out, but Dean has to know what they are to fight them. “Looks pretty dead,” he says and gives the lifeless body a hard kick with his boot. “In fact,” he says, crouching down, “he looks like he’s been dead for a while.”

Cas glances over his shoulder at Dean but quickly turns back to the window. “I believe that most monsters you fight are not exactly what you might call alive.”

“Touche,” Dean admits and gets the biggest knife out of the kitchen that he can find. He’d prefer his machete but the Impala is parked about five minutes away, and they’d have to make their way through a small forest piece.

When Dean comes back into the living room, Cas takes another glance at him. “A knife?”

“I don’t know what this guy is, but he sure can bleed,” Dean explains. “Everything else is in the trunk.”

“We should go then. Something isn’t right.”

Dean doesn’t like Cas’ tone at all but before he can voice that, the other window breaks with an ear-splitting sound and another figure is stumbling at Cas. “What kind of 28 days later shit is this?” Dean shouts, not giving the thing the chance to get even close to Cas.

Just like Cas did with the first one, Dean grabs it from behind and pulls it close to cut its throat. It works better than intended. The knife cuts deep into the monster’s neck, chopping the head clean off and Dean’s chest gets covered in blood and a gooey green substance. He gags and pushes the monster’s body away. “Disgusting.”

“Dean,” Cas shouts, and when Dean looks up, Cas’ angel blade soares past him, and the following thumping noise tells Dean that it’s made contact with another slimy monster.

Dean turns around and grabs the angel blade that’s sticking out of the monsters eye. He takes a moment to check that it’s really dead and quickly moves over to Cas who, now weaponless, went back to burning out his attackers. Dean hands him the blade, and only moments later, they find themselves surrounded.

They end up back to back, hacking and slashing, making sure that they never lose sight of each other, and when Cas can’t land a final blow with one particularly gross monster, Dean grabs it, flings it with all his might into the fireplace and rams the poker into its stomach to hold it in place. It keeps groaning while it goes up in flames, but everything else goes quiet.

Dean turns to Cas, who looks more disheveled than ever. His hair stands up in every direction, the trenchcoat has almost fallen from one of his shoulders and his tie is undone, hanging by its last thread. “I think that was all of them.”

“All of what? What are these things?” Dean blurts out, pointing at the still groaning monster in the fireplace. Romantic my ass.

Before Cas can answer, Dean can feel his phone vibrating in his pocket and pulls it out. “What’s up, Sammy?”

“Dean, I know you wanted some alone time, but something is going on. People are getting attacked by-”

“Fugly, slimy corpses?” Dean finishes Sam’s sentence.

“How do you-?” Sam begins. “You’ve been attacked, too?”

“Yeah, got a bunch of those sons of bitches. Don’t think I’ll get my deposit back.”

“Are you alright? Can you come back?” Sam asks, clearly worried now.

“We’re on our way,” Dean says with a glance at Cas. The angel nods and walks around to check that all of the monsters are dead.

“We?” Sam asks, and Dean bites his lip.

“Hello, Sam,” Cas says in the direction of Dean’s phone.

A small laugh comes through the phone before Sam speaks again. “Hey, Cas! Didn’t know you’d be there since Dean said he wanted to be alone.”

His tone is accusatory, and Dean definitely doesn’t want to get into that now. “What are these things? Any idea?”

Sam huffs, knowing full well that Dean tries to change the subject, but for now, he leaves him alone. “Best guess? Zombies. I have no idea why and how but they try to eat human flesh, they’re definitely dead, and beheading or otherwise damaging the brain seems to do the trick when it comes to killing them.”

“Great,” Dean grunts, kicking the corpse closest to him. Coincidentally, it’s the one who landed right on top of Dean’s picnic arrangement. “The Walking Dead.”

“I don’t think we’re in a TV show, Dean,” Cas deadpans, and as always, Dean is not sure if he’s actually this clueless or trying to take the piss out of him.

“Whatever,” Dean says, “we’ll grab Baby and haul ass back to the bunker.”

“Alright, I see if I can find something in the library. If zombies exist, I doubt it’s their first time around,” Sam says and hangs up the phone without a goodbye.

Dean pockets his phone before turning to the monster that’s still roasting in the fireplace. It’s at that moment that he notices the smell of burning hair and flesh. Dean pulls the poker out of the zombie’s body and rams it through its head instead. It stops moving immediately and the only sound left comes from Cas’ steps when he walks over to Dean. “I’m sorry the evening turned out like this,” Cas says.

A humorless laugh trembles over Dean’s lips. “Yeah, not exactly how I imagined.”

They stand there for a while, watching the dying flames when Cas reaches out and takes Dean’s hand. “I liked what you did here. And the apple pie was tasty.”

It sounds horribly stiff but since it’s Cas, Dean’s heart leaps. He glances down at their joined hands, and when he looks back up, Cas is watching him. Like so often before, Dean gets lost in the blue and depth of his eyes. He almost doesn’t notice when Cas speaks again, “I love you, Dean.”

“What?!” Dean’s brain freezes, and he squeezes Cas’ hand way too tight. For a moment, he’s sure he only imagined what Cas said, but Cas keeps looking at him with a soft smile.

“I love you,” he repeats, his voice steady. “I wish I would have said it before, maybe found a better occasion, but I’m not sure there will ever be one. So I’d rather say it now.”

When Dean’s grip loosens, Cas takes his hand away, and Dean is thankful that he’s giving him space. He’s almost tempted to leave or say something funny, just brush off what Cas said, but Cas is right. It doesn’t matter that they’re standing in a sea of corpses, the smell of rotten and burnt flesh still in the air. Dean’s heart is racing, the adrenaline from the fight still pumping through his veins. This is who they are, it’s what brought them together, and unless the world changes drastically, it will be their future. There won’t be a right time, no fairy tale moment with romance and all the right words. There’s just now.

Dean takes a deep breath, and all his fear and doubt crumbles under Cas’ familiar gaze. “I love you, too,” Dean says, the words coming as easy to him as breathing. “Kind of the whole point.”

He raises his arms and looks around the room to indicate that this is not his usual gig, corpses aside. Cas smiles, “When we’ve dealt with this, you have to show me how to bake a pie. For future reference.”

Dean grabs Cas and kisses him, deciding then and there that in the future, he’ll start with that.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like, please tell :) Thank you for reading :D


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